250gal and 2x100gal set up

[futrtrubl]

My questions (see bellow for background information):
Is there a better way to do the water outflow on the display tanks short of drilling the tanks?
Is the UV sterilizer nescessary? Can you identify it (picture at www.edowner.net/UVSter.jpg )?
I've worked out that the main tank will need about 750-1500 watts of lighting and each 100 gal tank will need about 300-500 watts. Is this correct? If so what are your recomendations for this, bearing in mind that all supplies will need to be shipped in from the US?
If my calculations are correct I'll need about 3750 gph of flow for the main tank and 1500gph for the smaller tanks. Correct? How much of this should be seawater input in a fully open system (no other filtration/skimming cicles)?
Is a fully open system recommended? If I go semi-open what would my seawater input requirements be now, and what other cleaning cycle requirements?
If we continue using a fully open system would a chiller be able to do anything since the water would only get a single pass through it? Would setting up a "chill tank" upstream make better sense?

The background:
I work at a marine lab in Jamaica and have been tasked with getting our aquariums up and running again. One is a ~250-300gal tank (245x75x60cm), "European" style if I understand the term correctly (lots of reinforcement along the top edges meaning no good edge to hang stuff). We have 2 other display tanks at about 100gal each (150x60x45), non-European. We also have about a dozen tanks up to 20gals that could be used at the display location and another set of fixed specimen tanks up to 100gal at another location that can be used for support (quarantene etc). The display tanks and the specimen tanks all recieve water from the sea 24/7, though during power outages we may loose flow if the backup generator fails to start automatically (not a rare occurence). Water flows out of the display tanks through a very simple syphon system, meaning that if the seawater pump fails the syphon takes out water untill it looses suction and if the seawater pump starts back up at that point the tank overflows.
The main tank will hold a reef system, simulating the local reef at 50ft. One 100 gal tank will be a mangrove system, and the other 100 is unassigned. Seawater flow branches off, after passing through a UV sterilizer, to each tank to keep them seperate to stop cross contamination and contamination from the sea.
During periods of high seawater temperature we do get some coral bleaching and death in the tanks and so we've planned to get a chiller.

Thanks for any help, Edward.

PS. I'll most likely have more questions once these are answered ;']

 

[Anonymous]

I believe flow through a UV sterilizer has to be fairly slow. There should be specs on what the proper flow rate is for the sterilizer you have, exceeding that flowrate will reduce its effectiveness.

There are ways to keep the siphon so that the tanks do not overflow after a power outage. The simplest is to hook up a venturi to the siphon so that after the power comes back on the venturi pulls the air out of that line.

Another is to construct a large weir, if its made correctly power outages will not have any effect on it.

That's about it for me

 

[ChrisRD]

Hi Edward and :welcome:

Personally, I don't have any experience with an open reef system like this as I've never lived in such close proximity to natural seawater (although I wish I could say otherwise!). :wink:

In addition, the Caribbean corals found locally to you are not available to most of us in the hobby.

I'll move your post into the main discussion forum and leave a copy in the NRF as well so you get the best chance of catching someone who's got experience with this type of setup (we have someone here by the name of Galleon that can probably help)...

HTH

 

[smit1260]

Sounds like a fun project!!!

I would say the the UV is a good idea. Flow rates through the UV are extremely important as well as crystal clear water. The slower the rate the better.

For your system I would say a semi-open system would work the best. This is because of the need to chill the water and the need for all the water to go through the UV. With the high flow rates you have (looks good!!!) some live rock should be all the filtration you need. Then you could pump seawater through at a rate to keep parameters at normal level. I would guess maybe 5% to 10% per day. It would depend on stock levels.

A chiller tank would not be a bad idea however if the flow is slow enough it might be able to just pass though the chiller.